José Lloveras de Reina (1922-2014) - Desnudo

Lloveras de Reina

Cassà de la Selva (Girona), 1922 – Barcelona, 2012.

Josep Lloveras y Feliu was a painter and sculptor. At fourteen he began his training as a painter. His first contact with this world was a caricaturist who did business at the cattle market of Girona. After the Spanish Civil War ended, he arrived in Barcelona and began working as a "wall painter". He would also enroll at the Tárrega Academy and later at the School of Fine Arts. During these years of apprenticeship he filled his first canvases, mainly religious in theme.

Between 1945 and 1948 he traveled through different countries in an adventurous journey. He traveled to Morocco, Tripoli and Paris to study at the Louvre School. In Paris he was immersed in Sartre and existentialism. During this period he created a work with erotic content signed under the name Sarevoll (his surname Lloveras spelled backwards). During this period he also travels to Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, England and the Nordic countries.

In 1953 he crossed the Atlantic to Mexico but, by accident, landed in Havana. His life and his work take a new turn by staying in Cuba. He experiments with his creative maturity and attains a very relevant role in shaping the artistic formation of the new generations of painters. In 1959 Fidel Castro came to power. That same year he met Montserrat Prat, whom he married the following year. He travels to Venezuela and presents an exhibition at the University of Caracas with "the painter children".

In 1967 he left Cuba and moved to Miami. He spends a short period in Puerto Rico. In 1970 he returned to Barcelona with his family. Once settled in Barcelona, he founded an art studio in the city, later opening another in Cassà de la Selva. He continues his painting work in both cities, but particularly in the latter where he makes his home. During these years he continues his pedagogical work in the visual arts.

In 1980 he founded the Estudio f¡Art Lloveras. From that moment his production is entirely made in Cassà de la Selva, where his role as a cultural dynamizer should also be noted. In his last thirty years he alternates his residence between Cassà and Barcelona. Very little remains of the old Parisian existentialism. The Virgin, cherubs, the female nude, and horses fill his pictorial universe in this period.

He used several signatures: Lloveras until 1945, Lloveras de Reina between 1946 and 1962, Sarevoll between 1949 and 1951 to sign his erotic works. Lloveras R from 1963 to 1978, and from the 80s again Lloveras.